Nicholas Léonard
AI Engineer at Sapper Labs Group
Montreal, Quebec, Canada
Summary
🤩
Rockstar🎓
Top SchoolNicholas Léonard is an AI engineer and former machine learning leader with 13+ years of hands-on ML and technical management experience, blending deep research roots with production impact. He led Expedia’s SEM applied research team to measurable business wins—driving an average of USD$17M/year in marketing revenue and dramatic improvements in Bing SEM metrics—by favoring simple, test-driven solutions and rigorous AB testing. A longtime PyTorch/Lua Torch contributor, he has deep low-level experience (CUDA, C, Theano/PyTensor) and has maintained core libraries and benchmarks that helped shape modern deep learning tooling. Nicholas combines agentic and generative AI research in fraud detection with pragmatic ML engineering (Databricks, PySpark, Airflow) to move models from experiment to production. His background as a Canadian Forces Signals Officer and work for the Canadian Space Agency add operational rigor and security-minded discipline that inform his approach to building reliable ML systems.
13 years of coding experience
13 years of employment as a software developer
Master's Degree, Computer Science (Deep Learning), Master's Degree, Computer Science (Deep Learning) at Université de MontréalBachelor's Degree, Computer Science, Bachelor's Degree, Computer Science at Royal Military College of Canada/Collège militaire royal du CanadaHigh School, High School at Écoles secondaire Hormisdas-Gamelin
English, French
Stackoverflow
2,626reputation
235kreached
14answers
20questions
Github Skills (41)
unit-testing10
pytorch10
benchmark10
c-language10
convolutional-neural-networks10
operation10
python10
testing10
tensorrt10
gpu-programming10
machine-learning10
benchmarking10
c1110
math10
distributions10
Programming languages (9)
Github contributions (5)
torch/nn
Apr 2014 - Aug 2017
Role in this project:
Back-end Developer
Back-end DeveloperContributions:188 commits, 77 PRs, 24 pushes in 3 years 4 months
Contributions summary:Nicholas contributed significantly to the `nn` library, specifically focusing on the `LookupTable` module. Their work involved implementing batch processing capabilities, fixing indentation issues, and adding unit tests to ensure functionality. Additionally, the user addressed a bug within the `Jacobian.lua` file and made changes to the `ClassNLLCriterion.lua` file by fixing a typo. The overall impact of the user's changes was to enhance the library with added functionality and improved test coverage.
torch/torch7
Mar 2014 - May 2017
http://torch.ch
Role in this project:ML Engineer
ML EngineerContributions:39 commits, 10 PRs, 7 pushes in 3 years 3 months
Contributions summary:Nicholas implemented and refined a multinomial sampling function within the Torch7 library, demonstrating expertise in probability distributions and random number generation. They initially added a function with replacement, then optimized it and implemented a version without replacement, improving memory usage and code efficiency. The contributions culminated in adding unit tests to ensure the correctness and reliability of the multinomial sampling functionality, showcasing a focus on algorithm design and testing.
libtorchtorchc-plus-plustensorautograd
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